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melisusthewee · 3 years ago

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OC Interview: Quinn Trevelyan

This took... a while. But it was such an interesting meme! Thank you so much @noire-pandora @morganlefaye79 @cleverblackcat and @darethshirl for tagging me! I almost sort of gave up on this and went back to my Warden as she would be much more open and candid about things, but when have I ever done the easier task?

For context, we will say that this interview was organized by Ambassador Montilyet once the Inquisition had comfortably established itself in Skyhold and its reputation had begun to grow, generating curiosity and interest among several circles across the south. Its subject found the whole idea questionable at best, but Josephine has her ways of wearing the Inquisitor down.

Introduction

Can you introduce yourself?

"Formally? Are you sure you want to write all of this down? Lord Inquisitor Quinn Julius [he grimaces] Barrington Trevelyan... His Most Holy... Herald of Andraste... etc etc. Look, just put down 'Quinn.' That's good enough."

What is your gender identity, orientation, and relationship status?

"I - what? I'm a man. And everything else is no one's business but my own. Unless this is a proposition. In which case - hang on, are you still writing?!"

Where and when were you born?

"Ostwick, 9:08 Dragon. If you want more details on the event, you'll have to go and write to my mother. Except please don't, as I don't want to read about it."

What is your weapon of choice and fighting style?

"I've used a bow since I was eight years old and I assure you I am even better than everyone says. You can go and check the competition board if you like. I'm surprised they haven't barred me from taking part yet... probably because I'm the one in charge. [he winks]

"There's an art to it. Everyone looks at a bow and thinks they can handle it just like everyone thinks they can pick up a sword and flail around until they hit something. But longbows aren't like you're plucking the strings on a harp. The average broadsword is what - two pounds? Compare that to the average draw weight of eighty-one pounds. You have to be strong, accurate, and careful. If the string's too taut, your aim will be off at best... at worst, it will snap and you'll lose an eye.

"As for style? Put down deadly. Yes, just like that. You didn't really think I'd give away all my secrets, did you?"

And finally, are you happy?

"Why wouldn't I be?"

Family and Friends

What is your family like? What is your relationship like with them?

[there is an extremely long silence]

"They're Trevelyans. There are a lot of them, they're wealthy, chances are that someone somewhere knows at least one of them. And they are all - well almost all of them - are all the way in Ostwick and I am here. And that's the best thing for all of us.

"...Yes, I did say almost. One of my brothers is - or was - a templar, and the Order's sort of not really around anymore so he stuck around with the Inquisition. Can you also interview him? Sure, if you want to. He's never had an interesting thing to say in his entire life though, so you're going to be disappointed. I'm the one with the looks and the personality."

Have you ever run away from home?

"There was one time when I considered becoming a bard - not the Orlesian sort - and just slipping away during one of the Grand Tourneys. I imagine no one would have noticed. But even I knew that was a very foolish idea as I didn't know how to play any instruments."

Would you want to get married or have children?

"No. Marriage is so... limiting. Why tie yourself down to one person? The idea is so dull."

Do you secretly hate any of your friends?

"What is the point of hating anyone secretly?"

What friend knows everything about you?

"No one. And anyone who claims otherwise is lying. Trust me."

Asked by fans

Can you read and write? Did you go to school?

"My father's the Bann of Ostwick. Do you really think they would have let me grow up without tutors? Life certainly would have been more fun that way, but no... I had lessons. I will admit that reading and writing is useful and important, but I'm not sure how important it was to learn to sing the Chant in its original Orlesian... unless you're trying to seduce someone who is very into that."

The scariest prediction you made that later came true?

"Hold on, did someone claim I was a fortune-teller? I'm Andraste's Herald, but she's the prophet, not me. I'm not making predictions about anything. I don't do that. Please don't start telling people that I do."

Do you have mental or physical problems?

"My back aches when it rains... old war wound and all. [he laughs] No, I've never been in a war... well, maybe depending on how you look at the current situation this might be my first. But I'm perfectly healthy. Make sure you put in that I was bright-eyed, alert, firm-chested..." [he continued but the transcript did not, despite his insistence to the contrary]

What's your main goal right now?

"Well, that's a complicated thing to answer. We're here to set things right. I'm here to keep the world from falling apart, and it isn't easy, and not everyone is amenable to stability. But I'm going to do it anyway."

Choices

Drink or eat?

"I don't think that's really an either/or choice."

Cats or dogs?

"If this is being published in Ferelden then I feel I should answer dogs. But I'm fond of cats too. Well, maybe fond isn't the right word. I am... amenable to both animals. There are a few cats around Skyhold that we keep as mousers, and only one of them is particularly mean. The rest are all right, and fond of chin scratches."

Optimist or pessimist?

"If you assume the worst then you can only ever be pleasantly surprised."

Sassy or sarcastic?

"Is there a difference? There is? Huh..."

Have You Ever:

Been caught sneaking out?

"Yes. So then I got better at it. And as long as I was back in my bed by sunrise, no one was the wiser. Oh, I'm certain this isn't new information to my parents. Trust me, nothing you write down about me is going to cause any greater scandal than all the times the city guard had to escort me back to my family's estate."

Broken a bone?

"I had my cheek broken in a tavern fight once. Cracked the skull right around my eye right about... here. [he taps his cheek just below his eye] It swelled up terribly and my father made me live with it for two entire days before he finally summoned a healer from the Circle to set it right. He thought it would teach me an important lesson, and in some way it did... just not the lesson he was hoping for." [he grins]

Did you get flowers?

"No, I can't say I ever have. [a pause] I'm going to be inundated with bouquets now, aren't I?"

Ghosting someone?

"Ah. Um. Well. Look, mornings are made of regret, so I don't intend to stick around for them."

You pretended to laugh at a joke you did not get?

"If I don't get the joke then it means it isn't a very good one and the person telling it shouldn't probably know that."

Oh lord, this took me forever... I hope this was amusing if not interesting though!

Tagging: @inquisitoracorn @rosella-writes @1000generations and anyone else who wants to do this and has yet to be tagged!

#oc: quinn trevelyan

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zorilleerrant · 4 years ago

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Coda to a Sixteen Book Epic Fantasy Series I Will Never Write

“How are you?” the Wizard says, and there’s a part of me that squeezes around panic, but most of me is shivering in profound relief because if he’s here then he’s real.

“Oh, gods,” I say, and it’s more of a prayer than I’ve ever said it before. There’s an image of laughter that keeps coming up, several of us around a campfire, and it’s not a cool day but I can feel the cold steaming out with the image of flames.

He looks at me in concern, looks around, looks back at me when he can’t seem to figure out what it is that has me frozen in place, all the muscles in my face gone slack. If he’s real, then the farmer is real too, and the farming tips she gave me that dance in my head. The blacksmith is real, and those comments about shoeing my horse.

“You’re real,” I say, and that wasn’t what I meant at all, what I meant was that was real, the bard, the mage, the thief, all of it was, but he seems to know what I mean anyway.

“Oh, if I’d known,” he says, and sighs, and scrubs at his beard. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it would be so confusing to you. If I’d known I’d have come sooner.”

“Nobody remembered me leaving,” I tell him, and there’s a whine in my voice, a pleading that won’t go away, higher and more fragile even than I expect it to be. Louder than it was the first time I spoke in that tavern, two weeks in, more confident, but still that old voice that I thought I had left behind. “Every single person remembers me here for the last five years, tilling the land as I always have. Going to market every Saturday. Nodding hello. Giving the trinkets I dig up from the garden to the neighborhood children to play with. Living my life here as if I never left.”

“It’s local,” he says.

I turn to look at the Wizard, really look at him, and he’s drawn now, looking haggard and rundown in a way he never does in my memories. Dark and mysterious and certain, stepping out from behind corners or just being where we planned to rest, offering up a knowing not-quite smile as he spoke to each of us in turn. He really is just an old man with too much magic swirling around him, but then, what else could he have been? He was never cruel, but we were none of us free to make our own choices.

He places an arm around my shoulders, gently, tentatively, but I feel no need to protest. After all, I know him better than anyone else in my life.

“The spell,” he says, “it’s local. It’s not – I don’t know how much you know about temporal mechanics? But if I’d really rewritten your history, that would’ve been Big Magic itself, and sort of counterproductive, don’t you think?”

“No one remembers,” I repeat, staring out at people just going about their day. No one remembers hands held in silent prayer, no one remembers fasting in solidarity or removing the curse, no one remembers voices raised together, none on key and yet together sounding exactly as intended in the quiet of the woods.

“No,” he says, “no, your friends don’t remember, as per the bargain. Everyone else does. Even the townsfolk would, if I hadn’t – admittedly it’s a bit intrusive of a spell, but it’s just an obfuscation focused on your person. Not true time dilation, it just takes what you’ve been doing and covers the gaps between when you left and when you returned, and it’ll fade as their memories fill in. It’s only so strong now because they keep questioning it. A little misdirection, a little credulity, and of course they’ve always trusted you.”

“My house was pristine when I returned,” I say, not looking behind me at the home I had assumed would fall to ruin. I had more important things on my mind, at the time. Though of course I’d forgotten the supplies I should have known to have, all of us had, and those first few nights struggling to fish for our dinner were a master class in patience for her, and you’d think a farmer would’ve been able to hold on to a struggling animal but we were neither of us used to it, though at least she managed to hold on and one of us had something to show for it.

“Oh, yes,” he says, “I had some people in to fix it.”

“You what?” I say.

“That’s hardly Big Magic,” he says. “It wasn’t even Small Magic. Well, the crew used some magic, I would wager, but they do this all the time. It wasn’t even ten gold for the whole house, and they threw in the vegetable garden for free.”

“Why would you do that?” I ask him, as he makes stern faces at me. It reminds me of being scolded for being too obtrusive while committing crime, and that from both sides of the law, the same expression I can see so clearly even when I can’t make out the features.

“Well, I felt bad, you know,” he says.

“It was a bargain knowingly made,” I say, and turn away from him. My mistakes are my own, and anyway, I’m not sure I should count it as one, even now. It feels in error too removed from the immediacy of the threat and not yet home as I should be.

“And it was the best one I could offer,” he tells me. “I never wanted to hurt any one of you. That’s why I wouldn’t take a death. I thought – I thought what you’d learned, what you’d fought for over the years, you could take that home and build a new life. Find new friends. That’s why I didn’t take your memories, even though it would’ve been kinder.”

“You could have left me their names, at least,” I tell him, as he looks at me with astonishment, and my mouth snaps closed. I just want something to cling to other than adjectives, jobs, the colors of their clothing.

“No, I couldn’t,” he says. “If I did, you could look them up anytime you wanted to, and it wouldn’t have been a sacrifice. It can’t power the magic if you’re just going to seek them out and rebuild everything I repurposed into the spell.”

“Oh,” I say, staring out into the middle distance again. It makes sense, of a sort, I suppose, and nothing for it now but to try to pick up the pieces of who I was before and start again. Soon I’ll have enough for another horse, perhaps a dog. The neighbor’s cat does well enough in my grains, but I suppose it can’t hurt to find a kitten or two. One of them had a kitten on the road, the tiniest thing, we fed it scraps and it gazed at us with orange eyes that only brightened with age. Of course, it was a familiar by then, and there’s no call to teach a mouser magic just for the barn.

“If you wandered out of town – I suppose you haven’t – you would’ve figured it out right away,” he tells me. “All those innkeepers and stablehands and oracles you met along the way would remember you, if you cared to venture back. I just thought you could use some peace and calm. Somewhere people wouldn’t ask questions you’d have trouble answering.”

“Seems a bit of a liability,” I tell him, thinking about all the hundreds, thousands of souls who could unravel the fabric of the thing with one misplaced word. A warm smile with bread offered freely in a town where the harvest fell short even so. New clothing from the same hands that pulled us from the river. Wary eyes, but clear directions still.

“Why?” he says. “Do you think they’d visit? All of them heroes in their own homes, congratulated on their victories? Even you haven’t left, and all you have to your name is quiet.”

“True enough,” I say, and wonder whether it’s fair to them, everyone who helped us achieve the impossible, why their names should all be forgotten to us as if they never mattered to the grand scheme of things. A coven and none else, that was the prophecy, but it’s never really none to save all, how can it be?

“Besides, again, far too much power,” he says. “I’d have to do Big Magic again, or else travel your footsteps for the last half-decade, looking each person in the aura, and who even knows if they would remember whether they remembered you? Besides. The number is off by one, and chances are they couldn’t describe you well. I doubt they know your name.”

“No,” I agree. What would be the odds they’d name me well enough to tug at strands of memory? No, not memory either, it would have to be emotion buried deep enough it would surpass the need for that. The Wizard promised all of that was gone, and nothing to fear. No single footstep fallen behind as we let the horses rest, no bed rumpled as I took a turn at watch. I didn’t give up all of it to be put right back where I started. Although, in a way, I suppose, it’s come to that regardless.

“Do you think you could be happy here?” he asks me.

I look around, but I see nothing I haven’t been looking at these past months. Nothing jumps out at me to spark either a yes or no, and I lapse deeper into silence.

“You always meant to retire here,” the Wizard says, “that’s what you told me. If too much has changed, I can find you somewhere else. It wasn’t meant to be a punishment.”

“Wasn’t it?” I ask, and too harshly. Someone yelled this at him already, not me.

He looks away from me. “I asked as little as I could, but there’s only so small of magics you can work with when you’re trying to save the world from destruction. All those little bits of energy, they have to come from somewhere, and there wasn’t time left to send you on a quest as I used to. If you’d been earlier – but there was so much in your way, and we didn’t have the luxury of sending you up a mountain to the blue roses that grow under the waterfall, did we? So I made do.”

“Would they have worked?” I ask, and there’s something else. Not roses. Smaller flowers, less ambitious, a soft yellow in color, and so many of them. A hand trailing through, someone asleep in the meadow, and a tale of childhood games.

“I don’t know if they’re real. It’s just an example,” the Wizard says. “It isn’t the roses that do the job, really, it’s the quest. You walk a spell into the land and the energy fills it back and forth, powering the Big Magic. That’s the idea, anyway.”

“Was it real?” I ask him, not daring to look him in the eye as I do.

“Your friendships? Of course they were. Taking them away wouldn’t have powered the magic if they weren’t.” He leans over to look me in the eye. “Hey. They were.”

“Any of it,” I say. Eyes meeting mine but I can’t put words to even what emotion sits in them. “How do I know it was real?”

He opens his mouth to speak, and pauses again. We wait in silence for an eternity before he finds a piece of proof strong enough to convince me against my own certainty, and even then he struggles to make it clear to me. “The prince has described things well enough, hasn’t he?”

And I have to pause to match my own recollections against those proclamations that have been issued, and perhaps they are close enough after all. Still. A few details bound in silk against the haze of words to a song I know I should recall.

“Write down what you remember,” the Wizard says, “little details, as many as you can, and I’ll tell him to fill in his side of the story, and you can compare them.”

“Why?” I ask. “Why would he do that for you?”

The Wizard pauses, unsure if he should go on, and I wait for him to speak for far too long before I realize his dilemma. I’m picturing instead a cobbler we visited once and the shine of a single buckle the whole time he’s contemplating answering what I’ve asked.

“He’s one of them,” I say. “He’s one of my companions.”

The Wizard nods in agreement, quietly, wary of breaking the silence.

“Should you have told me that?” I ask, picture the regal tilt of the head as he counted out coin to the cobbler’s hands.

He laughs. “What, you, a nameless farmer no one remembers? Yes, I guess you can just stroll right in and demand an audience. Or break in.”

“I could break in,” I tell him, lecture complete with disorienting reappearance fresh in my mind. “I haven’t lost the skills yet, I shouldn’t think. It’s only been a few months, and I still wake up thinking I need to practice.”

“Too many guards,” the Wizard says. “Please don’t, anyway. I shouldn’t have slipped up like that. I don’t think you’re likely to run into each other, though.”

“Which one was he?” I ask. “Did we know, did I know, he was the prince?”

“Oh,” says the Wizard, “I suppose you wouldn’t remember that either. I don’t know whether any of you knew. I would’ve thought you picked up on it, but I suppose we’ll never know for sure now. I mean. It was obvious from my end, but maybe I had more information than you did.”

“But you can’t tell me?” I ask. A word on the lips in candlelight, but I can’t make out which one. “It would be nice to put at least one name to my memories. At least one real name, anyway.” At least one name that isn’t just a bastardized pun.

“You never called him by the name we all know him by,” the Wizard says, softly, and there’s the lightest sprinkling of early morning rain amongst the trees, and there’s a name to the memories after all, a face, and everything in sharp clarity, and the pain, too, of knowing that whatever was there is gone. I hadn’t felt it so directly, not when they were still just impressions. When I gasp, my breath feels cold against my face, and I run my hands along my cheeks. His thumb was there, once, brushing them away.

“Oh,” I say.

“I can give you all their names, all their faces, if you promise never to seek them out,” the Wizard says. “If you don’t think it’s too much temptation.”

“No thank you,” I say, in a whisper, because I can’t go through this heartbreak again, not a dozen more times, temptation notwithstanding. Though I don’t think that’s an issue either, because how could I walk up to them and see their unsmiling faces, staring at me with blank distaste, knowing there was no way to get through to them? That even if I did, they’d never feel it, that if I ever did make them feel, even by accident, the whole magic would come crashing down around us? Better not.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and we sit in silence for a while.

“I can’t believe I slept with the crown prince,” I say.

The Wizard’s head snaps up as he turns to look at me. “You what?”

“What?” I ask him. Lips against my throat and a hand in my hair and now I can finally make out his whole expression. “The memories are real, aren’t they?”

“No, I mean, they are,” he reassures me, “I just. I didn’t know that. I mean, it tracks. But still. My gods. And that he was willing to give up.”

“What was?” I ask. “He’s the crown prince. I’m sure he can find sex anywhere he pleases, and it was never anything other than that.”

“Wasn’t it?” the Wizard asks me.

“Why should it be?” I return, but my heart isn’t in it. He whispered in my ear, holding me close before the others arrived and the distance between us with them. Maybe it wasn’t, but there’s no sense dwelling on it now.

“I knew he was in love with someone,” the Wizard tells me. “It wasn’t enough to power the magic, I didn’t think, but it was enough to be noticeable. But if it was you, maybe it would have been. I mean, you were central enough that it might have counted. Maybe I should have asked, but I assumed it was some barmaid or stableboy you’d found on your journey, not another major player.”

“You’re telling me the crown prince was in love with me?” I say.

“I think so,” he says. “And obviously he was willing to give that up, so I should’ve just asked him in the first place. It all would’ve been so much simpler.”

I sit there with the Wizard, watching them all say their goodbyes to me again, something I’ve been doing more than is healthy already, only now when his hands linger on mine his face is cast in sharp relief and I remember him, and the way his words echo make me want to claw my way through the memories to him, and now I know why the magic took their names and faces from me. He cries when he bids me farewell as always, but the tears are more immediate this time. Not just my sacrifice, but all of theirs, and him, if he was in love –

“What did you ask him to give up?” I say. “What was so much worse than lost love?”

“I don’t know if I should say.” He huffs and shakes his head. “I shouldn’t. It’s private. Yours to share, or not, as you will.”

It’s true. I never would have shared mine but they wouldn’t remember, and I needed the chance to say the things left unsaid. I stole your book, I broke your promise, I lied to you. Tell me what you need me to hear before you let me go. I don’t think any of them said what he asked them to give up, or if they did it’s too tied up in who they were for me to recall the details.

“Fair enough,” I say, and rest my head on my hands, phantom breath on my neck.

“You wouldn’t like it, anyway,” he says.

“Something he would value more than love?” I say. “It would have to be of utmost importance to him, and we don’t decide what we hold dear so carefully that I would judge him for it. There are always prices too high, and convictions too precious.”

“I think you would,” the Wizard says.

I glare at him. “Clearly you would like to tell me whether you say you would or not, but no, something he held in higher esteem than true love, as you so clearly think he was caught up in, is obviously a bit too important to make that kind of statement about.”

“It was a hundred thousand gold,” the Wizard says.

“What?”

“It was a hundred thousand,” the Wizard tells me, “that was enough to buy the reagents wholesale. You know what I said about your magic working as you work the land, and that feeds its way into the things you gather? Labor creates the magic, and enough small magic is enough to do Big Magic with. I would’ve just gone to the market, and fair compensation, no one needs to sacrifice anything at all. He said no.”

I stare at the Wizard in horror. “That motherfucker –”

#my writing #fantasy

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